Designing Design Careers, Part 3: Design
Support skill growth and career development by applying design.
This is the third part in a series of articles. Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
Our rapidly growing design practice required a better way of supporting skill growth and career development for designers at ExxonMobil. After initial research activities, my team began designing potential solutions to answer our How Might We question:
How might we enable our design community to easily develop their design skills and careers?
At a high-level, our design process included:
- Defining craft and behavioral skills required to practice design at ExxonMobil
- Defining design roles and skill expectations for internal design teams
- Leveraging corporate best practices and expanding upon them
- Measuring progress since the launch of our design career framework
- Iterating based on feedback and sharing learnings across ExxonMobil
Here’s how those design activities were conducted throughout 2019 and 2020, compared to research activities discussed in the previous articles:
Design Timeline
Defining Design Skills
Because people were not confident in assessing and progressing their design skills, and a few user experience skills had previously been defined for software developers, my team used skills as a starting point for initial design activities. We realized that defining skills was only a small part of setting consistent expectations for our design professionals: more work would certainly be required, but defining what skills matter to practice design at ExxonMobil was a great place to start.
We followed ExxonMobil best practices by defining skills using 4 levels of expertise: novice, practitioner, specialist, and expert.
This was important because:
- Skills must include 4 levels of expertise in our content management systems. If we couldn’t add them to official skill catalogs, our design skills would lose credibility.
- Sticking to corporate best practices increases the chance of formal leadership approval. If we couldn’t get leadership on board, it would signal that design skills didn’t matter at ExxonMobil.
- Internal positions are linked to skill requirements. If any positions outside of design wanted to leverage our skills, it would be challenging to shift expectations from the existing 4-level model.
To align with corporate standards for skill definitions, we divided each level into two categories:
- Proficiencies: define what knowledge is required to practice design craft skills
- Meaningful Experiences: acknowledge design accomplishments that demonstrate design craft abilities
My team built upon this approach to skills by creating our own framework to maintain consistency between design skill definitions.
We defined skills based on three main attributes:
- Knowledge: defines the mindset required to practice different skills
- Methods: includes the tools and techniques that demonstrate design craft abilities
- Impact: quantifies how to achieve objectives and create meaningful experiences by applying each skill
Here’s what that looks like within our design skill framework:
Novice (Level 1)
Knowledge
- Developing skill literacy
- Participates in internal training and activities to understand design craft fundamentals
Methods
- Observes, participates, and collaborates in human-centered design activities
- Works with guidance from senior design professionals
Impact
- Assists in design activities and co-creates experiences
- Contributes to a small internal project, product, or service
Practitioner (Level 2)
Knowledge
- Developing skill fluency
- Regularly practices craft and collaborates with specialists to increase skill proficiency
Methods
- Follows design direction and works within established best practices, processes, and guidelines
- Works primarily as an individual contributor
Impact
- Creates, evaluates, and improves experiences
- Contributes to multiple internal projects, products, or services
Specialist (Level 3)
Knowledge
- Developing skill mastery
- Deepens craft specialty by solving complex challenges and by actively participating in the design industry
Methods
- Adapts methods based on customer needs and domain complexity
- Leads internal design teams and large-scale projects
Impact
- Improves design standards, strategies, and practices
- Contributes to complex internal projects, product portfolios, and experiences
Expert (Level 4)
Knowledge
- Developing skill legacy
- Develops craft expertise by deepening insights across organizations and by actively contributing to the design industry
Methods
- Establishes best practices and processes through advanced study and experimentation
- Leads the design skill discipline
Impact
- Collaborates with business experts and customers to create a competitive advantage
- Contributes internally to portfolios across business lines and externally in the design industry
Iteration and Usability Testing
We revised the three skills defined for software developers (user research, interaction design, and usability testing) and created several new design craft skills. Then we conducted rounds and rounds of usability testing and incorporated feedback in our skill definitions.
Remember the initial user research skill definition from the previous article? Here’s what it looked like in first draft (with feedback) compared to today’s definition:
First Draft User Research Skill
Revised User Research Skill
Like most designers know, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, and try again. My team continued to update all skills based on feedback over the next few months.
Important updates included:
- Combining overlapping skills, proficiencies, and meaningful experiences
- Updating skills to provide additional context and include more meaningful examples
- Improving flow from one skill level to the next to demonstrate progression
- Improving overall readability to make definitions less overwhelming
- Removing typical years of experience to avoid confusion with required years of experience
The “final” list of design skills includes:
- Design Thinking
- User Research
- Service Design
- Content Design
- Interaction Design
- Visual Design
Even though design thinking can also be considered a method, we created it as a skill because it’s associated with problem-solving at ExxonMobil. Thanks to our internal Design Thinking 101 class, people across the company have become passionate about applying design to solve problems, and making design thinking a skill helps both designers and non-designers grow in this space.
Instead of keeping usability testing a separate skill, we incorporated it into the user research and interaction design skills because there was too much overlap between the definitions. We worked with both designers and software developers to make this decision, and we met with leadership to determine the potential impact of consolidating these skills on existing positions.
To explore all of our design craft skills in more detail, check out: ExxonMobil Design Roles and Skills (PDF).
We also leveraged behavioral skills from our HR organization, including skills like collaboration and communication when defining what skills matter to practice design at ExxonMobil. However, because HR is responsible for all behavioral skills at ExxonMobil, we did not make any changes to these definitions or create new behavioral skills. Instead, we partnered with HR teams to collect feedback so that they could revise these skills based on design community feedback and observations during usability tests.
Because skill definitions alone wouldn’t enable our design community to develop their skills and careers, we needed to create career paths for our design professionals. That process started with defining the disciplines and roles that matter for ExxonMobil design practices.
Defining Design Roles
Design at ExxonMobil includes three craft disciplines: design strategy, design research, and experience design. Although we had talented design professionals across these disciplines, they were not formally defined until my team started this design process.
We consolidated descriptions and feedback from design team members into three design disciplines:
- Design Strategy: A human-centered, inquiry driven approach to strategic thinking that helps ExxonMobil grow business in times of change
- Design Research: An approach to inform experience design and design strategies by understanding and communicating people’s motivations and behaviors
- Experience Design: An approach to planning, conceptualizing, and creating meaningful, human-centered product and service experiences
We represented each design discipline as a series of job roles with specific sets of skill requirements, and we built these job roles based on existing design positions and external job postings.
Design job roles share these characteristics:
- Job Description: Summarizes the expectations and requirements for each job role
- Role Responsibilities: Defines the typical work done across design teams and disciplines
- Skill Requirements: Links roles to skill proficiency expectations, from novice to expert
We started this process by building upon existing ExxonMobil design positions, which included: UX designer, UX researcher, senior UX designer, senior UX researcher, design thinking advisor, design lead, design research lead, design supervisor, and design manager.
Since these positions were created, our design practices had grown to more than just user experiences. To reflect this broader approach to design, we dropped “UX” from the titles. Additionally, because research at ExxonMobil includes scientific research, we updated our researcher roles to “design researcher” to avoid confusion.
Because our design thinking practices had grown into our design strategy discipline, we leveraged design industry naming conventions by renaming this role from “design thinking advisor” to “design strategist”. These people were more than just advisors who were practicing design thinking: they were creating long-term strategies by partnering with ExxonMobil business lines to drive value creation.
As mentioned in the previous article, these craft positions did not include advancement beyond senior roles, so we created new principal and fellow roles for more internal advancement opportunities. This 4-level approach also mirrored the 4-level approach to skills, allowing people to progress from novice to expert. Because our design practices are relatively new at ExxonMobil, my team anticipates adding more expert roles within the next few years. For example, we only included one design fellow role, but it may be represented as multiple roles across design disciplines in the future.
When reviewing the design lead and design research lead positions, the expectations and requirements were essentially the same, but the work was applied to different disciplines. We combined these into one “design lead” role because of the overlapping responsibilities: that’s the same reason we created a more generic designer role vs. specific roles for each design skill too. However, people could reflect different disciplines or expertise in their job titles (e.g. design research lead, visual designer) to add the specificity needed for particular positions.
We kept the design supervisor and design manager roles, but we refined these roles to include updated job descriptions, role responsibilities, and skill requirements based on research and usability tests. We also created a new DesignOps lead role because people were doing that work at ExxonMobil, but there was no formal job role associated with it.
The current list of our design roles includes:
Junior Roles
Characteristics:
Builds fundamental design craft skills and knowledge
Job Roles:
- Design Strategist
- Design Researcher
- Designer
Intermediate Roles
Characteristics:
Provides design direction and drives design standards
Job Roles:
- Senior Design Strategist
- Senior Design Researcher
- Senior Designer
- DesignOps Lead
- Design Lead
Advanced Roles
Characteristics:
Inspires and encourages others with design expertise
Job Roles:
- Principal Design Strategist
- Principal Design Researcher
- Principal Designer
- Design Supervisor
Expert Roles
Characteristics:
Pushes boundaries of the design discipline
Job Roles:
- Design Fellow
- Design Manager
To explore all of these roles in more detail, check out: ExxonMobil Design Roles and Skills (PDF).
Pulling It All Together
My team combined these design roles and skills into what ExxonMobil defines as a job family. Job families at ExxonMobil support career development for disciplines across the company by providing learning and career planning, and they are already in place for multiple disciplines. However, as of a few months ago, design wasn’t included. We made it our mission to change that.
We decided to work within ExxonMobil best practices to:
- Simplify implementation by leveraging and expanding upon existing talent management frameworks AND
- Obtain leadership support by working with our internal talent management teams and networks
Working within a job family also helped address several concerns we uncovered during research:
- Because participants were concerned about creating long-term design careers and obtaining formal approvals, partnering with HR and job family networks helped obtain senior leadership support for design at ExxonMobil.
- Because participants were limited in design career advancement opportunities, working with existing career communities helped establish career paths and important design skills for all ExxonMobil employees.
- Because participants worried how their personal expectations aligned with design team expectations, establishing a job family provided transparency into design practices and objectives.
These definitions are important, but providing opportunities for people to develop their skills is even more important.
Here’s a few things we’re doing for our design community at ExxonMobil:
- Training: We have multiple internal design classes created by ExxonMobil Design Education Leads, like Design Thinking 101, which we taught in 12 different countries last year: this class inspired over a thousand people at ExxonMobil to solve problems using design thinking approaches, and we’re excited to train even more. We also partner with our corporate learning teams to bring in external design industry experts to teach classes, including Jared Spool, Kim Goodwin, and Steve Portigal.
- Webinars: Our biggest learning opportunities beyond face-to-face classrooms include webinars and virtual training, which we are continuing to expand upon every day. The most popular webinar is an internal series called Exploring Design, which features topics and learnings from design professionals and enthusiasts within our global design community.
- Social Networking: Even in times of physical distancing, we understand the importance of social networking opportunities. One of those is a design mentorship program that we started a couple of months ago to help people grow their craft and leadership skills.
- Community Events: Whether it’s chatting about design over donuts or learning new techniques from design team members, we work hard to provide community events for established and aspiring designers. Our local communities of practice across the world help evangelize the importance of human-centered design, and globally we work together to support ExxonMobil’s design community.
Thanks to these opportunities and the design job family, at the beginning of 2020, the way people felt about their design careers and contributions had significantly improved.
Improving Confidence and Measuring Progress
When compared to the original 2019 baseline study from Part 2 in this series, people were much more confident in understanding job requirements, progressing their design skills, and achieving design career goals at ExxonMobil. However, there were still plenty of improvement opportunities.
2020 Research Insights
Defining design roles and skills set consistent expectations for practicing design at ExxonMobil.
Collaboration across design teams and months of iteration with teams across the company was crucial for creating transparent job and skill requirements. Building upon existing corporate frameworks simplified implementation, increased our chances of leadership approval, and made it easier for other organizations to follow the same approach to improving careers. Dozens of roles outside of design are leveraging our skills today, and many job families are following our approach to career development across ExxonMobil.
Linking skills to design roles and training opportunities enabled people to more effectively develop their design skills.
Partnering with corporate learning teams and HR helped establish the importance of design skills across the company by linking skills to training in our internal catalogs. Thanks to their support, we built credibility for design skills, and hundreds of people outside of design teams have assessed themselves against these skills since the beginning of the year.
Our design team members were more confident in understanding what skills were required for their current role, and they had more confidence in developing the skills that mattered for their dream design role. To help make people’s career aspirations a reality, I’m working with design education and talent leads to provide more learning opportunities and create skill development plans.
Establishing a formal design job family increased people’s confidence in achieving their design career goals.
Because design became an official ExxonMobil job family, approved by HR and senior leadership, we established that ExxonMobil’s design practice was here to stay. Having confidence in achieving design career goals is still a challenge though: confidence improved, but people were still concerned about achieving organizational support to develop a career in design. This is one of our biggest challenges as we continue to grow design at the company, and we need to gain support from more and more senior leaders.
Takeaways
We’re continuing to embrace design careers and to iterate and improve. I’m excited to have shared our process and journey with you, and I can’t wait to see (and share) where we go next. In the spirit of sharing, here’s a few things to keep in mind if you’re facing similar challenges in your organization:
Understand your existing company frameworks and your own community needs.
These are the steps we took at ExxonMobil and how we interacted with our internal design professionals, but every organization is different. Tailor your approaches to meet your specific challenges.
Share your learnings liberally and get leadership on board.
Working with HR and talent teams helped implement the design job family and build credibility to gain senior leadership support. It also helped teams outside of design to improve their own careers and frameworks by sharing learnings from our human-centered approach with them.
Act like an artist by collecting and building upon existing ideas.
Leverage existing resources, like what we put together for ExxonMobil’s design job family, and embrace the human-centered design process by iterating and improving along the way.
